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Tamil Journalist Likely to be Deported from Sri Lanka

2013 Dec 27

By P K Balachandran - COLOMBO

The Sri Lankan Terrorist Investigation Department is questioning Junior Vikatan journalist, Tamil Prabhakaran, on charges of violating visa regulations and taking pictures of army camps in the North Lankan district of Kilinochchi.

The Kilinochchi police took the scribe, TNA MP Sritharan, and a Northern Provincial Councillor, Pasupathi Pillai, to a police station and questioned them.

The local leaders were subsequently let off, but Prabhakaran was asked to stay. The police said he would be handed over to immigration authorities in Colombo for deportation to India.

It is reported here that Prabhakaran had written extensively on the Tamil issue and the LTTE in Sri Lanka and had authored a book ‘Searching the Footsteps of the Tigers’. He had visited the country previously, it is said.

The Sri Lankan authorities have become very strict with regard to observance of visa regulations. Last month, Australian Green Party Senator, Lee Rhiannon, and New Zealand MP, Jan Logie, who were on a fact-finding mission on the alleged human rights abuses and war crimes in Sri Lanka, were questioned and deported as they were about to address a media seminar. Itinerant sari traders from Tamil Nadu are frequently arrested and deported for doing business without a business visa. Likewise, skilled harvesting machine operators and maintenance personnel are deported because they do not come with a proper visa.

The Centre for Human Rights and Research (CHR) Sri Lanka, www.chrsrilanka.com the sister organization of Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE) www.caffe.lk, was established in 2010 in a bid to address the growing human rights concerns in the country and to educate the people about issues which have been neglected by the main stream media or civil society groups for various reasons. In addition to our continuous work with CSOs and human rights activism, in the past four years we have studied, spoken about and published greatly on Freedom of Information, Academic Freedom, and the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC).